Ukrainian Flag NFT Raises $6.75M for Country’s War Efforts
UkraineDAO, a crowdfunding campaign led by Russian art collective Pussy Riot and non-fungible token studio Trippy Labs to help Ukraine's anti-Russian war, arranged the sale.
Through a service called PartyBid, the winning bid for the 1-of-1 flag NFT was submitted on behalf of a pool of 3,271 donors, allowing the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to basically acquire the NFT from itself through donations from its members.
UkraineDAO said it will distribute amounts of its LOVE token according to the amount of ether donated to wallets that contributed to the sale.
The DAO says its tokens will have “[n]o utility nor value, but are a beautiful testament and reminder of your contribution to a noble cause,” according to its website.
The recent sale of a high-value NFT is just the latest example of cryptocurrencies being utilized to financially support the Ukrainian government.
Since tweeting out its ether (ETH) and bitcoin (BTC) addresses on Feb. 26, the country's government has received over $40 million in crypto donations, with NFT-based donations accounting for about $7 million of that total.
On March 1, a rare CryptoPunk was sent to the country's Ethereum wallet, and other blockchain luminaries have hurried to join the fold.